Great tips from best-selling healthy eating writer and foodie, Natasha Corrett, author of Honestly Healthy
Are you hosting a dinner party and have guests with food allergies or intolerances? Discover great tips on catering for free-from guests with tips from Natasha Corrett
Disclaimer: Please note this contributor’s account is a personal experience and should not be considered medically approved dietary advice.
PLAN YOUR MENU IN ADVANCE
It can be very overwhelming cooking for a dinner party full stop, and now more and more people are realising they have intolerances to certain foods especially wheat, gluten and dairy, so it can be even more daunting.
Don’t fear though, preparing to cook for friends with intolerances doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming. Choosing a menu you can cook the night before will lift the stress that you have by a huge amount.
SHOP FREE-FROM – THE VARIETY OF OPTIONS IS LIMITLESS
The easiest thing to do is find the dish you want to make and find the free-from ingredients to swap for what the recipe calls for. For example if someone is gluten or wheat-free and you are making lasagne for dinner, just find gluten and wheat-free lasagne sheets and follow the recipe as it is.
The point is, you don’t have to make a completely different meal just for the one or two people with intolerances. There are so many great tasting free-from products out on the market now and Holland & Barrett stock over 1,000 products online now. You will find that those without intolerances or allergies won’t even notice if the ingredients are free-from – that’s how far the products have come these days.
TIPS – MAKING SIMPLE SWAPS
If someone has a dairy allergy or intolerance just find, either rice, almond, or soya milk to swap the milk content in your dish. Gluten and wheat are easy as there are gluten-free flours, pastas, cakes and treats on the market now so you don’t have to follow a specialist recipe.
SUGAR-FREE? CATERING FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO EXCLUDE IT
The other big ingredient that people are trying to stay away from is sugar. It’s a growing area in the free-from food world and while choosing to abstain from it is not usually due to an allergy or intolerance, many feel a lot better for reducing or cutting out sugar.
If you are planning on making a desert you can make some refined sugar-free options that are really easy to make. You just need to use any of the alternatives, instead of the sugar content including:
- Honey
- Agave
- Coconut palm sugar
- Rice syrup
- Date syrup
- Xylitol
- Stevia
It’s now so much easier as you have so many options to cook with, so you never feel that you are missing out. Yes, you can still have your cake and eat it, well gluten, wheat, dairy and sugar-free!
Try some of my free-from recipes by visiting www.honestlyhealthyfood.com and try some for yourself!
